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Wayne Newton
|hometown = Norfolk, Virginia |knownfor = Las Vegas entertainer |season = Dancing with the Stars 5 |partner = Cheryl Burke |place = 10th |highestscore = 19 (Cha-cha-cha) |lowestscore = 15 (Quickstep) |averagescore = 17.3 }} Carson Wayne Newton is a celebrity from season 5 of Dancing with the Stars. Early Life He was born Carson Wayne Newton in Norfolk, Virginia, to Patrick Newton, an auto mechanic, and his wife, Evelyn Marie Plasters. He is of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German, and Native American ancestry. Newton has stated that his mother is half Cherokee and his father half Patawomeck. When his father was serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Newton spent his early years in Roanoke, learning the piano, guitar, and steel guitar at age six. While he was still a child, his family moved to near Newark, Ohio. He began singing in local clubs, theaters, and fairs with his older brother, Jerry. However, Newton's severe asthma forced his family to move to Phoenix in 1952, where he graduated from North High School. The brothers, as the Rascals in Rhythm, appeared with the Grand Ole Opry roadshows and on ABC's Ozark Jubilee, and performed for the president and auditioned unsuccessfully for Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour. In the spring of 1958, near the end of his junior year of high school, a Las Vegas booking agent saw Newton on a local TV show, Lew King Rangers Show, on which the two Newton brothers were performing and took them back for an audition. Originally signed for two weeks, the brothers eventually performed for five years, doing six shows a day. They first performed 29 September 1962 on The Jackie Gleason Show. He would perform on Gleason's show twelve times over the following two years. In the early to mid-1960s, Wayne also acted and sang as "Andy" the baby-faced Ponderosa ranch hand on the classic western TV series, Bonanza. Entertainment Career Many prominent entertainment icons such as Lucille Ball, Bobby Darin, Danny Thomas, George Burns, and Jack Benny lent Newton their support. In particular, Benny hired Newton as an opening act for his show. After his job with Benny ended, Newton was offered a job to open for another comic at the Flamingo Hotel, but Newton asked for, and was given, a headline act. In 1972 his recording of "Daddy, Don't You Walk So Fast" sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in July 1972. Influential music director Rosalie Trombley of Canadian station CKLW "The Big 8" radio in the Detroit area decided to add the record to her radio station to embarrass her ex-husband, who wasn't faithful about seeing his children, as Trombley explained in the documentary, Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of the Big 8. The record topped the Canadian charts. From Detroit, "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" took off and broke nationwide. From 1980 through 1982, The Beach Boys and The Grass Roots performed Independence Day concerts on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., attracting large crowds. However, in April 1983, James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, banned Independence Day concerts on the Mall by such groups. Watt said that "rock bands" that had performed on the Mall on Independence Day in 1981 and 1982 had encouraged drug use and alcoholism and had attracted "the wrong element", who would mug individuals and families attending any similar events in the future. Watt then announced that Newton, a friend and supporter of President Reagan and a contributor to Republican Party political campaigns, would perform at the Mall's 1983 Independence Day celebration. When Newton entered an Independence Day stage on the Mall, members of the audience booed. Newton's live stage show was broadcast 23 May 1989 as a Pay-Per-View event called Wayne Newton Live in Concert. In an odd break with tradition, Newton didn't perform his trademark songs "Danke Schoen" or "Red Roses for a Blue Lady". Newton did, however, close the show with a special finale of "MacArthur Park", which culminated with an onstage rainfall. On 12 December 1992, Newton hit #1 on the Cashbox Pop and Country charts with an Elvis Presley-inspired song, "The Letter". Controversy swirled around this chart feat, as "The Letter" did not chart at all on Billboard Magazine's authoritative Hot 100 chart, Adult Contemporary chart or "Bubbling Under" chart. It did not make the Radio and Records magazine chart either. This marked the first and only time in history that a record hit #1 on the Cashbox Top 100 chart, yet failed even to chart on Billboard's Hot 100. In 1994, Newton performed his 25,000th solo show in Las Vegas. In 1999, Newton signed a ten-year deal with the Stardust, calling for him to perform there forty weeks out of the year for six shows a week in a showroom named after him. Orchestrated by his business partner, Jack Wishna, this "headliner-in-residence" deal was the first of its kind. In 2005, in preparation for the eventual demolition of the casino, the deal was, from all reports, amicably terminated; Newton began a thirty-show stint that summer at the Hilton. His last show at the Stardust was 20 April 2005. During a break in his on stage performance, he announced to the crowd that night he wanted to spend more time with his wife and new daughter as the main reasons for canceling the contract. Newton said the Boyd family made him a very nice offer to stay on past the demolition of the hotel and casino and to play in other Boyd venues, but Newton declined citing "another deal in the works for Vegas", but he did not mention the Hilton specifically. News crews were expecting this performance to end on time, to make their 10 pm and 11 pm shows, but the show finally ended around 11:30 pm, thus eliminating the possibility. Mr. Las Vegas went on at 7:30 that night, and sang nearly his entire repertoire and songs of other Vegas mainstays as well. Newton was elected to the Gaming Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2001, Newton succeeded Bob Hope as chairman of the USO Celebrity Circle. In January 2005, Newton started a reality television show on E! called The Entertainer. The winner got a spot in his act, plus a headlining act of their own for a year. And during player introductions at the 2007 NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas, Newton sang Presley's "Viva Las Vegas". Newton was the grand marshal of the 80th Annual Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester, Virginia, 1–7 May 2007. He canceled a sold-out show to join the Festival. During the taping of Dancing with the Stars, which takes place at CBS Television City, he also became the first guest on The Price Is Right, which tapes on the same lot, under host Drew Carey, who began adding guests to the show, especially to present prizes. Newton appeared after a trip to Las Vegas was shown. In 2007 Newton revealed on Larry King Live how he personally confronted Johnny Carson about jokes the The Tonight Show host was making about him. Newton said he thought "Johnny Carson is a mean-spirited human being. And there are people that he has hurt that people will never know about. And for some reason at some point, he decided to turn that kind of negative attention toward me. And I refused to have it." In 2008, Newton received a Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a national memorial to President Wilson, commemorates "the ideals and concerns of Woodrow Wilson." The award honors leaders who have given back to their communities. Beginning 14 October 2009, he began performing his newest show Once Before I Go at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. A year later he took a five-year hiatus to spend time with his family and prepare his voice for a future Las Vegas residency. In 2016, Newton returned to the stage at Bally's Hotel in the form of a lounge show called Up Close & Personal, a combination of live singing, playing some of the thirteen self-taught instruments (learned in the past to give his voice a rest when performing six shows a night at the Fremont Hotel), and movie and TV clips shown on screen. Personal Life In 1968, Newton married Elaine Okamura. They had one child and divorced in 1985. In 1994, Newton married Kathleen McCrone, a lawyer from North Olmsted, Ohio. The couple has one daughter, Lauren Ashley Newton, who was born 19 April 2002. Dancing with the Stars 5 Newton was featured on the 2007 fall season of Dancing with the Stars partnered with two-time champion Cheryl Burke. He became the third contestant to be eliminated from the contest. Scores Gallery Wayne-Cheryl-Promo5.jpg WayneNewton-Promo5.jpg Category:Males Category:Contestants Category:Season 5 contestants Category:Singers